Does Your IVR Really Save You Money? As the original self-service tool, IVR technology has long been a cost savings mechanism. Unfortunately, many organizations today don’t realize that their antiquated IVR solution is actually driving up contact center costs because the options are so limited and the containment rate is so low. So, what can... Read More

It’s December now. Snow, in some places, is falling. Soon, holiday lights will be flickering and thoughts of what the new year will bring will occupy us. And we know what that means. That’s right. It will be time to read all the articles about IVR and contact center and customer service trends for 2017.... Read More

I’ll share a personal experience here and then see if I can’t raise it to a principle of IVR. I have a gold-level account at my bank. That gets me some extra services, free this and no-fee that. Most of the time I bank through online and mobile channels. But when I do call in... Read More

I talk a lot about personalization. About how you can study how each caller into your IVR behaves over time, and about how to adjust the automated interaction to support and react based on that data. Of course, in order to analyze the behavior pattern of a caller, there has to be enough behavior to... Read More

The other day I read an article called Top 10 Customer Experience Trends For 2016-17 by Brian Cantor. You can read it here. It has nothing to do with IVR. It’s about live-agent contact centers, and ways to improve the experience for the customer. Useful, pragmatic ideas. Here are some of the main points. •... Read More

Ah the old Tabula Rasa. Which of us in the world of contact center automation doesn’t think daily about the Stoic school of ancient Greek philosophy whose idea of mind was one of a blank slate (more literally, an “erased slate”) upon which is written life experiences. You know. Like an IVR. In fact, I... Read More

In the past couple of posts I’ve talked about the importance of not allowing your IVR to stand in the way when your caller zeros out to reach an agent. But you face another issue that stands between call handoff and customer satisfaction: the wait. Here’s where your IVR comes back into play. Even though... Read More

There are lots of great suggestions about how to keep customers from zeroing out. But sometimes zeroing out is exactly what you want them to do. When? Whenever they want. If your customer wants to talk to an agent, make it happen. If he hits zero, send him on to a live agent, no questions... Read More

We talk a lot about IVR containment. Containment is a good thing. The fewer people that zero out the better your return on your IVR investment. But there’s one time where containment is not a good thing. When the caller doesn’t want to be contained.Your business success doesn’t depend upon how well you keep customers... Read More

Sometimes, I’m just thinking out loud here, in a world of smartphones and devices and the Internet of Things, we begin to look at IVR as another telegraph or typewriter—something so yesterday, so antiquated, so powerless—at least in comparison. But it’s just not true: certainly not today, and it will be even less so... Read More

USAN recently published a white paper called How to Make Customers Fall in Love with Your IVR. It’s a spotlight piece, designed to highlight the value of advanced IVR features. I thought I’d spend a few blog posts drilling down a little more deeply into those features. I’m going to start with the way IVR... Read More

A Software-Based Omnichannel As a technology matures, even in the early stages of that maturity, it gets smarter, smaller, streamlined. It also heads over to the software side of things. Software solutions—instead of software built to run on a hardware solution—are more versatile, easier to grow and evolve, easier to adapt, and a longer-value investment.... Read More

Within our IVR community, there are still doubts and misgivings about the Cloud. People worry about its reliability and performance, the loss of control, the quality and security of their system. They worry about all these things. But they shouldn’t. Read More

When does it make sense to consider letting a Managed Services organization handle your IVR? The answer lies in your own organization. Do you have the right amount of people, equipment and other resources you’ll need to maintain a first-quality system? Read More

If you’re thinking IVR, chances are you’re thinking of first-time installation, replacing what you have, or maximizing the return on your existing system. We’ve put together an eBook to help with all three. It’s called Press or Say Success: An IVR Buyer’s Guide for the 21st Century. It’s a no hype, no promo, no nonsense... Read More

Omnichannel-based self service is all about simplicity. The simpler you can make the tasks, the more your customers will handle them alone. That’s been true for a few years. What’s different today is how we define “simple.” Read More

USAN's Director of Product Development Michael Gregorio joins other industry experts in this Contact Center Pipeline article discussing the top challenges that contact centers face when transitioning to an omnichannel strategy. Read More

Most business owners consider IVR a necessary evil and unrecoupable expense. But this is truly a short-sighted view when one considers the possibility of generating revenue from their interactive voice system. With the right technology and approach, your customer self-service systems can become revenue generation tools that can bring demonstrable ROI. Download this white paper... Read More

We talk a lot about how an IVR can sell your products and services. However, the first thing we have to do is get our customers to want to use the system. Why don’t we use the IVR for that too? Let’s let our IVR systems champion their own cause. Read More

Sales leveraging techniques with your IVR will transform it from a service-only channel into a strong sales channel. It’s ability to recognize caller profiles, follow business rules regarding how and where to route calls, and present both targeted and general offers are all IVR capabilities that many companies have yet to exploit. Read More